Dese212 Tma03

Automatic processing is information already learnt and activated without conscious awareness and without inference with other conscious activity that may be going on at the same time. A series of studies using reaction times draws on these concepts in the form of automatic detection. Previous research found a large increase in the time taken by participants in completing a colour reading task. This was explained by the automation of reading where the mind automatically determined the meaning of word. These results have been used to investigate psychological capacities and processing speed. In the current experiment interference of a congruent stimuli was employed. The results showed that difference in response did have significant effect on response times providing further support for there being some sort of automatic processing.

Introduction

The idea of attention is selective cognitive processing of an aspect of the environment and the allocation of processing resources. This implies that non-selected information is ignored or not ‘attended to’. This notion was supported by the experiment conducted by Simons and Levin (1998) which illustrated a phenomenon referred to as ‘change blindness’, from which people failed to notice a change in person during the study. This provided insight that not all information is taken in or consciously observed to all stimuli. This was embodied by Kahneman (1973) who suggested that we have limited amount of resource to process and analyse incoming information then adding it to information already held in memory. These processes are known as controlled processes that use conscious control in processing. However the theory does not explain how sometimes it is possible to do two things at once which led to the development of two-process theories.
Through a series of experiments led by Schneider and Shiffrin (1977), exposed a distinction between conscious and unconscious controlled processing and looked...